Gratitudes – Page 3 – Soul Reflection

Anger

I recently got cross with a dear friend’s little girl. It had been bubbling a while, something that I needed to take some time to look at and also a reflex. I had spent the weekend being told a series of untruths, just as children do, but one came after too many and I had enough. I was angry, not wildly so, I didn’t say or do anything terrible but it was clear I was annoyed and cross. As many of us know, this a great faux pas. To be angry with another person’s child is a line that ought not to be traversed.

I apologised, and I meant it, both to child and mother but that line had been crossed and therein lies an issue.

I “shouldn’t” have been angry with her.

Except where there are ‘shoulds’ there are unhealthy shadows, more over it has been done, it can’t be undone, yet the focus is so often about trying to erase its memory, trying to find a way to discount it from our past. Why have we got such an aversion, such a stigma around anger? Of course, we can always endeavour to find the kind way, of course we can learn from our outbursts and try to do it differently next time, but why are we, as a society, so unforgiving about anger? If someone does something to upset you surely it is healthy to let that out? And even with the very best of intentions, sometimes that comes as an explosion. I don’t believe that anger is a bad energy, it is One of our energies and it is important to acknowledge it.

I look at all the sickness in the world right now and so much is spawn from anger; I am closely present to a darling friend trying to save her own life as she heals herself of cancer, and she has Anger. She has anger from her childhood, so buried within her system that it is making her mortally sick. And I can promise you, that anger is well deserved, I know a fraction of her story and she has every right to be mad as hell. I expect she has her moments of daily anger, she has a political rant every now and again, but she needs to get crazy angry for a moment, a real stomach churning, yeti screaming, puce face eruption of energy and get it out. But where can she do this? Where is there permission to do this? Instead she is supposed to move on, forgive, take the high road, have compassion. Well she does, she has all of those in buckets and spades but she needs her anger too. She needs is so that she can live to see her children grow up and so that I can make my way to Oz and give her a bloody big hug.

So I go back to this place I’m at right now where I feel so horrible for having been angry with this lovely little girl, I feel mean and ogre-ish and yet there is a tendril poking up through my shame that says, ‘it’s ok’, ‘you got cross because right then you needed to’, ‘you apologised because you’re nice too’ and actually I think that is true.

And I am grateful to this experience, as much as the fences that need building between me and my friend are hurting my soul, I know this reflection on my own anger is healing and positive. I know that I am going to take it into my own family and give greater permission for my kids and my husband AND Me to have our outbursts. That instead of shaming those moments, instead of shaming me for being perceived as imperfect, I am going to feel that energy course out of my system and return to peace.

Anger is welcome here.

The Gift

I have spent quite a lot of today crying.

The day started well, I was calm with my kids as we prepared for school and all details that entails, the morning ran smoothly and I reached a crafting session in good time and in good spirits. I have been crafting these last few weeks to prepare for a community Christmas event, creating seasonally themed trinkets to sell at a fair.

I do not want to scour through the ins and outs of what happened next but the very brief synopsis is that one member of the group informed me that my crafting ‘standard’ was not high enough, not acceptable enough for sale. There are so many ways in which this could have been received, processed, handled and I can imagine there even could be a time when I might let it roll of my proverbial duck’s back; instead I was utterly crushed.

Somehow, and I genuinely don’t know quite how, I managed to stay an hour and give a vague air of togetherness. I left as soon as was polite (please note still needing to please in some form or other) and came home to cry, a lot.

I have cried so much today that it has not been something that I have been able to hide from my kids, even if I wanted to, so I gave them my story. I told them that I was really sad because the crafts I had been making weren’t ‘good enough’ for this woman and she had told me in a way that felt unkind to me. My son (3) has told me that he will hit this woman next time for being naughty to me (!) and my daughter (6) has suggested more tactful ways she could have framed her message.

But one other thing did happen at supper. Both children decided to cut up their scrambled eggs (why not?) and my daughter started to speak to her little brother and then stopped. She turned to me and said, ‘I almost told him he was doing it wrong’….

A gift, the gift…. my husband always reminds me that there is a gift somewhere in a difficult situation… I have asked my daughter so many times to let her brother learn in his own way, I have explained how she got to experience all her firsts without anyone telling her she was ‘wrong’ and how wonderful it would be for her brother to have that too. And my words haven’t resonated and she has continued, until today, until she saw how crushed I have been by someone telling me I’m doing it wrong.

So thank you to that woman for the gift you have brought to my family; it’s felt hard, but totally worthwhile if it helps us to remember to let us each find our own way.

Father’s Day

Father’s Day used to be a day of contradictions for me; cherishing the love my husband brings to our children, honouring and appreciating how much he is a father to them in a way that I have never experienced for myself, whilst simultaneously not acknowledging my father at all. In fact, I am so used to my history of ignoring Father’s Day in relation to my own dad that I primarily relate to it as a day solely for my children; it is only the standard collection of status’ on Facebook that reminds me to consider him.

Yet today I feel such love for my father and I feel such love from him. I feel this because he is dead.

My father died two years ago (Goodbye Daddy) and as it is still fairly recent, I am still asked occasionally how I am doing since his passing. I sometimes feel awkward in my response to these questions because the expectation is a level of pain, but I feel the opposite. I feel so at peace with my father now, so connected to him. He comes to me as dragonflies, they fly in and out of my house and rest nearby, hovering around me with their colours vibrant and wholesome. He is here visiting me, loving me, being beside me in a way he was totally incapable of during his living years.

I have had a sense of & connection to spirit since I was young though I have not always understood how to define it, especially in the face of my very rational and scientific upbringing. However the strength of his love since death is almost tangible in its presence and having wished for it for 36 years whilst he was alive, I am incapable of denying it now.

So on this day, for the first time, I can wish both my husband and my father a Happy Father’s Day with authentic and honest gratitude for their love.

Time Stands Still

One of the things that fires up my internal pressure cooker is when time is a ticking and I have a commitment to be somewhere / do something etc. There is nothing like watching my teenies daydreaming whilst attempting to put on their coat and shoes to send my temperature soaring and my best parenting intentions out of the window.

No matter how much I have chatted to myself about this; how much I have reminded myself that being kind is more important than being on time; or how their slow pace is so blissful and wise; I can get triggered over and over.

Then I read ‘Outrageous Openness’ by Tosha Silver, a stunning reminder of the perfection of divine flow. Jam packed with anecdotes and stories, each one a jewel on its own yet, from this book, they have also become part of the glittering aura that has surrounded me since.

I have been here before, I have sat midstream in total trust of the universe and I have watched and felt all unfold in perfection around me. But for some time now, I’ve been sitting on the bank of the river, knowing it’s there and also forgetting how to swim. Tosha brought it all back and more, not only am I swimming again but aided by a life jacket that enables me to float should I ever forget again.

And now? Now what happens when I wake late and need to get two kids fed, dressed and out the door?

Now, time stands still.

I am trusting the timings of the divine and I am rewarded with extra minutes, extra moments. All is well.

I Emerge

Before having my own kids, I was great with children. (Bear with me a moment…) Before kids, I would spend hours hanging out with other people’s children, they would be my company when I felt out of place at some adult shindig; they would feed my endless desire for motherhood; but mostly I just really enjoyed their honesty and refreshing energy. Then my own children arrived and the strangest thing happened, I went off everyone else’s children. I was not interested in getting to know them, or in cuddling the babes or really connecting with them on any level unless it was related to my own children somehow. I almost felt ashamed about it, such was my aversion.

Then just last week, I felt it again. I had the time and energy to think about and consider some other little mite and reignite that pleasure of interaction with some joyful Littles, besides my own. This is not the only thing that has changed recently, I have started to delve back into my wardrobe and pull out some old gems and special favourites; I take time to consider my outfits in the morning – only a few extra moments mind, but long enough to become a conscious decision rather than a flurried debacle. My husband took both my kids out for the morning last weekend and for the first time in almost 3 years I had more than a snatched moment to gather my thoughts.

I am emerging back into the world.

Why the shift? Because my youngest is 2years and 9 months old and his last tooth just came through.

Through observation, I believe that 2.5 to 3 years old is a major developmental turning point in our children. I noticed it in my eldest but was already heavily pregnant with my second so was unable to reap the rewards for myself. This time round, there is no baby in my belly and I feel myself returning. My youngest can now be distracted or delayed from a boob appointment if I need to do something else; he can spend time with Daddy because he wants to not because I’m trying to off load him for a moment; he can communicate with me to a level high enough that we can actually resolve some issues with relative ease; he is still attached but he is beginning the slow transition out into the world himself.

I write this because it feels so great to emerge again, to breathe the air of my own needs and desires, and because I know for all those mamas out there wanting to parent naturally having a long term guide is actually so helpful and reassuring. I know I’ve got at least another year of breastfeeding, but lay that against the 5.5 consecutive years I have done already and that’s a walk in the park. I know that, if I had known that once all the teeth come in everything shifts and relaxes a little, I wouldn’t have spend months wondering if I was doing the right thing with this, at times intense, demand feeding. I know that when I told a friend recently, with her 6 month old, that she only had a couple of years till the crazy nights settled down, I could hear her sigh with relief, because it sounds like a lot but actually it’s just knowing that feels better, feels manageable, feels able to surrender to.

So I emerge back into this world, enjoying my few moments of fresh air when I am welcoming back myself and feeling so grateful for having trusted my kids needs and instincts in letting our attachment unfold quietly, gently, slowly, peacefully.

Expansion

I wish I could draw or paint the vision I held this morning. I will try to depict it with words, but they will not be enough.

Back in 2000 and something, I spent some evenings at The College of Psychic Studies, there is some irony in the fact that I cannot exactly remember what I was studying, but I went diligently and, from recollection, eagerly, every week for a term. One thing I did take away with me was Pete.

Pete is my spirit guide (and here I enter into a whole new paradigm, an area that can connect and also alienate, but I hope that even the die-hard sceptics can read the message rather than the messenger). I’m not going to describe him in great detail except to say that he really makes me laugh, more than anyone I know. I used to chat with him fairly regularly in my meditations and then parenting happened and I lost my grounding a little.

In the last few weeks, I’ve been meditating again and have reconnected with Pete, who is as charming and witty as ever. This morning, as I floated in the bath, with the kids playing around me, Pete showed me Expansion.

He showed me the middle of a space where all around me as far as the eye could see were these swirls of blues, every hue and tone. Like swimming in the most exotic of seas and yet instead of water, more like luxurious silks and threads. It was beautiful, peaceful and so clear. I knew that every emotion that I placed here became diluted and softened as it spread throughout the space. That I could hold my hardest and most challenging feelings and set them free here, to be energetically dispersed. There was an understanding that nothing was right or wrong but simply that anything that felt too strong could be spread out and lightened and it was called Expansion.

It is a glorious, glorious place and one that I wanted to share….

Cancel Everything

A little over five weeks ago, my daughter developed a cough. Nothing out of the ordinary, except it just didn’t shift, didn’t progress, and was violent in its dry, hollow call. We kept her at home, with a growing suspicion that it could be whooping cough and sure enough, 10 days in, the whoop appeared.

It is not called the ‘100 day cough’ for nothing and we are still in the midst of it, though the very worst is behind both of my children now. (Poetically interrupted by a dash upstairs to sit with my youngest during a coughing episode.)

I have been itching to write about the journey so far, and have finally found a moment, because it really has been extraordinary. Gratefully, I have known three families who have been through the experience, so was armed with the knowledge that accepting the lengthy duration of confinement is absolutely key.

So I cancelled everything. All the summer swimming classes, the playdates, the daytrips. Stopped. Life outside of our house has stopped. And there is a part of that which is blissful.

Please don’t misinterpret that last sentence. Whooping cough is epic and exhausting and violent and distressing for everyone AND it brings with it a spiritual unfolding, a forcing of presence and of letting go. There have been so many silver linings to this journey so far that I wouldn’t trade it for anything.

Beyond the pragmatic joy that both my children will have a healthy long immunity and come out the other side of this in fighting form; my youngest decided it was time to try out the potty and without any additional stresses of carrying around potties or panicking about little early day accidents, it was a casual, easy process; my eldest informed me that when she wasn’t sick I could be grumpy but that whilst she was ill I was not grumpy – clarity, from the mouths of babes, I need to get a handle on my grumps; with everything cancelled and no pressures to be anywhere at any time, my grumpiness reduced by 75% and highlighted to me how much I ‘stress react’, projected pressure becomes grumpy mummy, time for some serious lifestyle shifts; with lots of gentle hours factored in I suddenly found that I did have time to read a few pages here and there and in the last five weeks have read three books, which must be a record since the beginning of the ‘mummy years’.

The list can go on, we have spent hours in our garden looking for worms and slugs and casually weeding as we go; we have drawn, painted, weaved, glued, beaded, cooked, danced, sung, hugged, stopped. We have noticed how an episode can be triggered by the slightest upset, the beginning of a cry, the shock of a shout, and are learning through this the importance of calm, learning to calm ourselves with breath, learning to choose our upsets.

I know as the next few weeks pass and we begin to emerge out into the world again this path will twist and turn and reveal more secrets to me. I have loved the time with my children, just connecting, seeing and being with them. Despite the media hysteria that builds over this illness, I have witnessed it to be an offering of intense and unswappable spiritual dimensions, a rite of passage. Whilst I don’t wish this illness onto others, I do wish everyone the chance to Stop for a significant stretch, it makes for a beautiful segue.

Addendum: Practical Tips for Whooping Cough

We have followed the High Vitamin C Protocol which has significantly reduced my children’s coughing episodes. Here is the information from Suzanne Humphries, MD.

We have been supported through this by our homeopath who has stayed on call to be front line with changing remedies as the pictures have changed.

We have practiced breathing exercises to stay calm and also noticing that holding the breath in the midst of the episode can reduce the violence and regain control.

We have used every muslin, towel and tea-towel in the house for catching vomit and mucous. Be prepared for the requirement and extra laundry.

We have cancelled everything…

Ego V. Soul

There is nothing like parenting to introduce us to the spiritual journey of facing our Ego – full frontal, no holds barred.

From the moment we conceive we have opportunities to make choices that perhaps go against what we perceive we ‘want’. So we may not eat sugar during pregnancy despite craving some chunky slices of chocolate cake; we want to sleep more than anything once they’ve arrived in the world, but we can choose to wake with them and support them during those early years; we may wish for a tidy and serene house and yet allow toddler chaos to reach the four corners of each room. There are manifold moments where we surrender to offering our children the ‘best’ of ourselves against the desires we may (previously) have.

And then there is also the tightrope of listening to our soul. Surrendering our ego is an empowering and spiritual journey that can take us to deeper places of understanding, compassion and love AND offering up too much of our soul and spirit does the opposite.

Where is that line? And how do we traverse it?

I noticed it in myself, just in the smallest moment, yesterday. I was breastfeeding my son and he, being a strident toddler, likes to pinch and pull at my breasts whilst feeding. I saw my boundary very clearly, I saw that I was so happy to give him my breast for as long as he needs and I was not happy to be prodded and poked alongside it, that felt invasive and exhausting. So I set my boundary. Done. Simple.

Many choices in parenting are not so simple. Many times each and every day we can reach an apex where we have go inside and ascertain whether our ego is calling to which we can surrender it, or whether our soul is speaking to which we need to listen.

I will never forget the moment, many moons ago when I read the Neale Donald Walsch series Conversations With God, where he so clearly outlined that each and every choice in life is made either with Love (Soul) or Fear (Ego). I recognised it as ‘truth’ then and also how hard it can be to always see the love path, it is no different in parenting; our choices can seem to be out of love (protection / kindness) but are hidden places of fear (over protection / beliefs on manners).

Listening to my soul is my spiritual mission, to help me offer myself as a more compassionate and loving mother, friend, wife, daughter and every other role I stand in. My ego is strong and has protected me for many years from pain and anxiety and it is also time to surrender. Alongside that challenge is the yang, the balance, remembering that there are moments where honouring my needs are as important, that in doing so I will be more gracious in surrender when that time comes too.

The Healing Gift of CoSleeping

During my first pregnancy, I read a lovely book called Baby Bliss by Dr Harvey Karp which was full of gentle natural soothing tips for newborns and, detailing the 4th Trimester Theory, why our little ones need such strong attachment in those early months. I clearly remember discussing it with my midwife afterwards and saying that although it all made lots of natural sense, the cosleeping might be a bit too far for me.

There were many reasons for this, largely fear about hurting my baby, but also a big emotional message about how unhealthy this would be for my relationship and perhaps long term for my child – could it be emotionally damaging for a child to cosleep? So my little girl arrived and although those early days did include lots of snuggles in bed, I was gently moving her into the Moses basket next to the bed and after 8 months into a cot in a separate room. I never sleep trained her and I breast fed on-demand, so our nights were busy and disrupted as I had to rise frequently to feed and resettle her, exhausting for both of us.

A few months of this until I moved her into a toddler bed in order that I could feed her lying down, followed by installing a mattress by her bed to continue my night on, for she would invariably wake up to 5 times a night until all her teeth came through at 2 yrs and 4months. I thought I was cosleeping at this point, but I was still resistant to actually having her on the mattress with me, thinking that at some point she must learn to sleep alone….

By now, I was pregnant with my son and I had learned enough to know that this time we would be cosleeping from the start. I sold the cot, I sold the Moses basket, I was not going to be waking up in the night to move anywhere except to roll over and feed him. Within two days of his birth I had both my daughter and son sleeping on either side of me and the puzzle pieces started to fall into place.

What I noticed with my newborn son was how often, from the earliest of days, he would reach for me, find me and return to sleep. Yes he needed his nightly feeds and he had no hesitation grabbing me and nuzzling me for those, but more that that he frequently checked that I was there. And my heart broke a little as I realised how often my daughter would have done that, how often her little hand would have rustled around to find me and be left wanting, wondering, worrying.

I cannot take back those early years of her sleep experience but my son has helped teach me how healing sharing our sleep can be. From the moment that clarity came, that understanding that security and attachment comes in sleep as well as wakefulness, I began to reparent my daughter. She went from sleeping curled up in her own space on the other side of the bed, from being alone, to where she sleeps now, curved into my spine. I know now that she feels connected at night as well as day and I know one day, when she is ready, she will want her space again for all the best reasons and she will sleep independently. I know now that when I’ve had a tough mummy day, when my patience has been stunted and I’ve been grouchy and snappy, that we heal together whilst we sleep. That those hours in the darkest time of rest, re-set us, remind us of our deepest soul connection, they provide the space of forgiveness without the need for words or thought. My heart heals when I lie between my gifts from the Universe, when I listen to their soft breaths and feel their fingers reach for those reassuring touches. All of the questions around cosleeping, the pragmatic questions on logistics and comfort and ethics become totally meaningless and I remember how our ancestors have co-slept for thousands of years.

We sleep, we sleep well, we sleep with love.

Grapes or Blueberries?

Bear with me for a moment as I recount my breakfast moment today….

I was munching on my cereal this morning and bit down on a texture that felt unexpected. I presumed it was an ‘odd’ blueberry. I had momentarily forgotten that I had put my kids left over grapes in my bowl too. What struck me was that despite being familiar with grapes and their texture, my instant belief was that there were only blueberries in my cereal and therefore I had to ‘make’ this a blueberry.

I hope I haven’t lost you already because actually this blew my mind as such an amazingly profound recognition of human understanding.

We define situations entirely based on our own belief.

Here in bold it might not look mind-blowing, in fact it could look quite ‘whatever’. But what I experienced this morning was how unthinkingly I believed it to be a blueberry, how despite being open-minded and a free thinker etc etc, I needed to believe it was a blueberry because that’s all I thought I had in my bowl.

Every day I am becoming more and more aware of the truth behind the adage ‘until you have walked in their shoes’. For me it has taken a backlash of reactions from friends and family to some of my own choices to highlight this to me, so even from the darkness of these times, I am grateful for their judgements. I am grateful because I see that from their position, their place, their beliefs my choices are ‘difficult’ and I also see how loving and compassionate and kind they are and if they walked in my shoes just for a moment, they would ‘get it’. They just don’t know that I am a grape, not a blueberry. If they did, they would accept me as a grape, instead I’m an ‘odd’ blueberry.

This post is surreal, even for me as I write it, but it is an epiphany moment. It’s the relative understanding that every assumption we make upon another is based on thinking they are blueberries, when instead they could be kiwi, lime, pineapple, bread, chocolate, egg…. I’m laughing as I write this, but it really could shift our dynamics if we grasped this concept and ran with it. Imagine every time someone riled you, you were able to pause and recognise they weren’t a match in that moment, they weren’t a blueberry and as such you couldn’t actually be sure that if you weren’t a blueberry too, perhaps you might just behave in the same way. If you were a grape or a tomato, perhaps you would act that way too, say those things, dance that dance and laugh that laugh and it would seem oh so normal and ordinary.

So I am so grateful for my grape mistake which will fruitliy remind me that my beliefs are mine and very valid they are too, but they are not for everyone.